I am actually surprised that the security platform is robust enough that the US governments best cyber security experts can't figure out a way around it on their own. They should just hire some kid from Anonymous.

@Cliff_Forster said:
I am actually surprised that the security platform is robust enough that the US governments best cyber security experts can't figure out a way around it on their own. They should just hire some kid from Anonymous.

I'm sure that they can, the FBI is just using this as a chance to set precedence. If they can get Apple to build this, it won't be hard to use their victory here to get the same thing from Google, Microsoft, RHEL, et cetera.

Or they can do it so easily that they try to make the impression that they can't, so all the terrorists will be like "I use Apple because FBI can't hack me". When in reality the FBI has everything they need.

There are no great scenarios here. The only good outcome is if the order gets reversed by the Supreme Court, is rebuked by society at large, and leaves the kind of access they're requesting contingent on rare exploits and extraordinary brute force attacks.

The linked article above said:
The piece also reveals that Apple had asked the FBI to make its court application under seal – meaning that the legal arguments could be heard in private – but the FBI chose instead to make it a public fight …

Apple executives say the phone was in the possession of the government when that passcode was reset. A federal official familiar with the investigation confirmed that federal investigators were indeed in possession of the phone when the reset occurred.

Missing the opportunity for a backup was crucial because some of the information stored on the phone would have been backed up to the iCloud and could have potentially been retrieved. According to court records, the iPhone had not been backed up since Oct. 19, 2015, one-and-a-half months before the attack and that this “indicates to the FBI that Farook may have disabled the automatic iCloud backup function to hide evidence.”

A "kid" (really, I don't think so) from Anonymous wouldn't work in this case for the same reason the feds are having trouble. There is a huge difference between getting access before and after the act.

This is very complex and messy and needs to go to the supreme court. Even at that level the international and overall policy issues may still not be fully discussed or considered.

It also has large risk issues for organizationally supplied and BYOD devices.

Some observations:

Unclear if this is a 5C running iOS 7 or 9 reports vary

It was not a personal phone but belonged to the County meaning there is even less of a right to privacy

County has consented to it being accessed

Cloud backups appear to have been disabled and the botched recovery of the iCloud password may have rendered data inaccessible via that vector

Now the fbi claims the reset is immaterial to their investigation and they are after other things

A great deal of information here should be accessible to the feds by other means, so the big question is what (if anything) is on the phone that they are really after? This may simply be about precedent.

One important point to me that I've seen mentioned very little: they destroyed two phones and not the work phone. Why would they go to effort of destroying two phones that would have evidence and just ... not the third if it also contained info? This exercise is pretty bad.

A great deal of information here should be accessible to the feds by other means, so the big question is what (if anything) is on the phone that they are really after? This may simply be about precedent.

I expect so, and that's what opponents are concerned about. I know I don't mind the FBI reading this guy's phone in particular. If they could get in without sacrificing my privacy and security in the process, more power to them.

I think Apple is standing for privacy, but it's not a universal stand. This is Real Talk:

Ottawa Citizen Op-Ed
In my judgment, Apple is using this situation as an opportunity to show it is standing up for privacy, a business David against the U.S. government Goliath. The irony here is immense: Multinationals such as Apple (and Google and Microsoft) collect far more data about individuals than governments do, analyse it far more, and have far fewer constraints on how it gets used.

It can be argued that this is hypocrisy on the part of Apple, but that doesn't mean they have to adapt to other people's ideas of a consistent philosophy and stop fighting the case.

For the time being, Apple is doing us a favor forcing this debate out into the open.

For the record, I am for privacy and lawful access, but not necessarily back doors. This isn't a contradiction. Where you set the balance point is very difficult and if screwed up will cause huge problems. And sometimes you need to say no. That applies to both sides. It really is complicated. To pretend this is a simple argument is naivety or spin. How it's done is also a huge challenge to get right. There will be mistakes and compromises (good and bad). Also, people need to realize it's a debate that may need to be revisited from time to time because developments will shift that balance point over time. And it's a debate that has to happen out in the open.